Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Announcing Project/Open

Ah, OK Frank. I was under the impression that you wrote the system in OACS4.x and were asking the community to roll back the work.

If you have done your work in 3.4.X... I dunno what to tell you. The community is charging ahead on 5.X. Most likely, you're best bet will be to join with Jade and extend his work.

From the perspective of how to get "business doods" more involved, I think that's much of what the governance discussions have been asking, at least in a roundabout way. How do we get anyone involved is probably a better question.

Generally, taking leadership is simply an issue of doing it - no one will stand in the way of someone stepping up to address a shortcoming of the community, as long as that person is respectful of the general process the community works under. And if that person is not, he or she generally finds out quickly enough.

That being said, we've been generally open to new voices offering proposals for improvement and are, in fact, trying to formalize that process. There are plenty of examples where we've screwed up in that regard, and we need to clean up those mistakes so they don't happen again.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that this is an ideal time for you as a business guy to step up as a leader in the community by simply proving your worth as a colleague.

On another note, I would very much like to let the issue of arsdigita just die. Yes, we've inherited their code. Yes, a lot of the developers and members of the community are here because of the Book. But aD has very little to do with the challengers the community faces ATM.

At LinuxWorld, I really dreaded when someone would say, "Oh, I know the OpenACS - I've been a fan of Philip for years!" I felt compelled to tell them, "Well, you know he's a shill for Microsoft now? And that his insolent childish behavior and poor managerial skills helped destroy that company?"

Now, there are plenty of examples of my insolent, childish behavior scattered throughout these forums and I've got a whole bunch of bank statements that should go in the Managerial Hall of Shame, so I probably shouldn't throw too many stones regarding Philip's success as an entrepreneur.

But I want to stress that aD is, as far as I am considered with regard to the OpenACS, dead, buried and the only time we should discuss them is when trying to figure out who was the lunatic that came up with the abstract, post-modernist idea of relational segments and why did he write a separate version of acs-mail for it?

Anyway, those are my heavily mortgaged two cents.

I should thank you though - I haven't had the chance to throw some good aD flamage in a while! Vinod's gender bending and Don's insatiable hunger for more toilet paper both make for good material, but there's nothing like kicking that dead horse called aD!

talli